Archive for June, 2012

Over the last several days, I’ve been trying to use Sencha Command to package a Sencha Touch 2 app as a native app. Honestly, for most of the process, everything worked perfectly…until I actually had to package the app. I ran the build command, like so:

sencha app build native

Throughout the build process, everything seemed to be going well, until the minification of the actual app.js file. Here’s the error I received:

Well, I *finally* figured it out. I emphasize “finally”, as the issue was actually a code error on my part. In my app, I used the word “final” as a variable in one of my controllers. Apparently, this is a reserved word (or something like that), and so the minifier blew up. Changing the variable name resolved all the issues.

With the recent updates to DragonVale v1.8, the app has seen some impressive evolution since its inception. The app now has a thriving community, and despite its ridiculous freemium business model, the updates keep coming…so money is being made off of it.

As we get closer to the 2.0 release (not suggesting it’s imminent), I thought I’d share some ideas about what should be done to really take this game to the next level. With dot releases, you don’t expect a revolution…nice touches here, a new feature there, but nothing off the chain. With the release of a whole version, though, it’s a chance to reinvent and make a play for a whole new set of players. So without further introduction, here are some things I’d like to see in the 2.0 release.

More Robust Management Tools

Currently, the app only really allows you to manage your world on an item-by-item basis. There is literally no way to get a “high” view of what’s going on. Version 2.0 needs to fix this. So what does this look like? One idea is global interfaces for managing common “types”–dragons, buildings, farms, etc. It’s tremendously annoying to have to go to each habitat in order More >